So I recently built a new rig, and found Hardware Canucks in the process. But anyways I moved my old computer to my basement and connected it to the network with a D-Link USB adapter and it's incredibly slow. So I'm thinking I should get a new wireless router. Right now I have a D-Link DI-524. My budget is $200 and under. I really don't know anything about routers so does anyone have any suggestions?

So I recently built a new rig, and found Hardware Canucks in the process. But anyways I moved my old computer to my basement and connected it to the network with a D-Link USB adapter and it's incredibly slow. So I'm thinking I should get a new wireless router. Right now I have a D-Link DI-524. My budget is $200 and under. I really don't know anything about routers so does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for reading...so here's a dancing banana

I would put some thought into it and see if you can't run a wire to your computer cleanly. In my experience Wireless Routers don't work good enough to my standards. Running a wire will work perfectly each and every time, and will always be faster than wireless.

But anyway, if you want wireless the "N" products are supposed to offer the most range and speed so I would pick one of them.... which brand I'm not too sure as I gave up on wireless with Wireless G and 9db gain antennas, (etc etc etc) and I'd still get frequent drop outs.

I would put some thought into it and see if you can't run a wire to your computer cleanly. In my experience Wireless Routers don't work good enough to my standards. Running a wire will work perfectly each and every time, and will always be faster than wireless.

But anyway, if you want wireless the "N" products are supposed to offer the most range and speed so I would pick one of them.... which brand I'm not too sure as I gave up on wireless with Wireless G and 9db gain antennas, (etc etc etc) and I'd still get frequent drop outs.

Well Draft N (is it still draft?) Wireless routers will give you the most coverage and strongest signals, though i've found G Range Boost Wireless routers/network cards have worked quite well also. It really depends on how far you want to cover, if you'll be going through just wood/dry wall or if you're going through concrete. Though i do agree with Perineum, at my parent's place, we ran a cable down from the den (which is on the 2nd floor) down to the basement through the laundry room (barely noticable since its in the corner) and ran it to at the time my x-box. I'm now home for the summer and have a couple of devices that need internet access, so i hooked up my switch to the cable and allowed me to have multiple connections off that red cable.

To recap: Wireless g+ RangeBoost if you are not going excessively far (can typically cover a house if its on the main/2nd floor down to the basement) and don't have concrete or dense materials in your walls/floors and are only using 1-4 devices on the wireless network.
Wireless Draft N will give you more range and signal strength as well will support more devices as well (without bottlenecking the bandwidth). Personally i think the dual band Draft N wireless routers are just over priced and useless right now.

Hopefully this was helpful and other people agree with me, if not, its always great to hear from multiple people from different angles.

NCIX just had some wicked deals on their linksys stuff, I know their wireless N router was on for half off last week. Personally I would stick to linksys if your going wireless, I have yet to have an issue with their gear where as dlink has given me nothing but headaches.

Personally I just paid $19 for a linksys WRT54G2 wireless "g" router, it was refirbished but came in perfect shape and has been going strong ever since, and I have very little issues with speed on any of the 4 computer connected to the network at ranges up to 30'. Internet wise wireless "g" supports upto I believe its 11mbps full speed.

I got a DIR-655 as well about a month ago (A4 revision). Assuming you use an adapter that supports 40MHz over 2.4GHz, then you can get the full 300Mbps connection. On my laptop, with WPA2 AES, I can get like 10MB/s from my desktop to wireless laptop. And that's running a mixed setup with 20MHz for 802.11g clients as well. Apparently if I ran 802.11n exclusively, the speed would would increase quite a bit.

It should be noted that 5.8GHz (aka dual-band stuff) doesn't penetrate objects as well so it could be more problematic. Even though marketing hype claims its so much better.

Now they just need to find a way to overclock a G router to get speeds up and not just range and id be happy, although any gaming PC in my house connects wired to the router and I dont stream video ever or files often between the networked computers, its just fun to overclock stuff.